New Hampshire family describes chaos at Boston Marathon after bombing

Ron Brassard is loaded into an ambulance after he was injured by the first of two bombs that exploded Monday near the finish line of the 117th Boston Marathon. (Jim Rogash/Getty Images)

The weather was beautiful on Monday, Karen Brassard said. Her family had traveled from Epsom, N.H. to watch a friend finish up the Boston Marathon. Her husband, Ronald, daughter, Krystara, and friend Victoria McGrath were laughing and smiling, clearly excited to be there.

Until they realized they were standing 10 feet away from a bomb.

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"It was just an incredible boom," Brassard told the Lowell Sun. "You could feel the air rush right through you."

The Brassards' world changed in a moments. Debris was protruding from both of Karen's calves. A chunk of her husband's leg was missing. Her daughter was covered in shrapnel and Victoria was crawling on the floor, with an injury to her leg.

"All I wanted to do was get them away from there," she said. "People were screaming and scrambling. Railings had fallen on top of people."

Immediately after the blast, Ron temporarily lost his hearing. He told CNN's Anderson Cooper that he could see people's mouths moving but couldn't hear any sounds.

Karen said that her husband Ron (on gurney) had a hole the size of a baseball in his leg. (Jim Rogash/Getty Images)

"The noise was scarier than the blast itself because it was so loud," Ron said from his hospital bed.

Pain shot through Ron's legs. And within seconds, another bomb rocked the ground.

"You heard the second one and you wonder, is there a third, is there a fourth, is there a fifth?" Ron told CNN.

He started bleeding profusely, leaving pools of blood on the ground wherever he stepped.

In the middle of that chaos, Karen saw people running up to their family, asking how they could help.

Ron Brassard said he was 10 feet away from the first blast. (CNN)

Runners who had just finished the marathon rushed over to the Brassards and used the shirts off their backs to wrap up Ron's leg. When the family ducked into a nearby children's clothing store, Karen said the employees grabbed clothing from the shelves to try to stop the bleeding from Victoria's leg.

"It was amazing to see how everybody was there for anyone who needed help," Karen said.

Ron and Victoria were taken immediately to Tufts Medical Center. Both of them have already had surgeries and are awaiting a second round. Doctors will need to fill the hole in Ron's leg with a skin graft. Karen and her daughter Krystara were sent to Boston Medical Center. Karen says that her eardrum was punctured by the blast and that she may suffer hearing loss for the rest of her life. Krystara's ankle was dislocated.

But Karen says her family was lucky. Another one of the couple's friends had to have both legs amputated just below the knee.

"We really were lucky. A quarter of an inch one direction or another, and it's an entirely different situation," Karen told the Lowell Sun.

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Passersby used their own shirts to wrap a makeshift tourniquet around Ron’s leg. (CNN)

Although Ron feels angry about what happened, he said he's not going to let the sadness of the day affect him.

"You can't let people control your life like that," Ron told CNN. "You just can't."

But Karen doesn't know if she will ever be able to attend another public event like the Boston Marathon.

"I hope it doesn't affect me, but I don't know if I will put myself out there in that kind of situation again," she said. "There's nothing anyone could have done differently. It just happened. You can't protect everyone all the time."